So far during the pandemic, various factors have impacted whether new COVID-19 cases globally increase or decline in countries. Among these factors are infection prevention policies, mutations of the coronavirus itself, and human responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as practicing physical distancing, handwashing, mask wearing, and especially attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines [
1,
2]. Although the overwhelming scientific consensus is clear regarding vaccine safety and their potential to significantly weaken the link between cases, serious illness, and death, many people choose to not be vaccinated [
3]. Why does it happen, and how can we address this problem? To answer these questions scholars and practitioners investigate not only social and political factors, but also psychological characteristics that could predict and thereby ultimately prevent COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. For example, previous research found that low trust in vaccines in general [
4], concerns about side effects related to vaccines [
5], distrust in government or healthcare professionals [
6], the need for closure [
7], and conspiracy beliefs contributed to factors that generate more doubts and objections to COVID-19 vaccination [
8,
9]. In this work, we focus on the latter aforementioned factors and analyze the role of social identities in seizing on COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs that, according to our assumptions, would further lead to lower willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19.
1.1. COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs—Causes and Consequences
Shortly after the European Union had officially launched its program of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in December 2020, conspiracy theories and misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines began to circulate online [
10,
11,
12,
13]. These theories often accuse scientists, governmental agencies, and pharmaceutical companies of concealing information from the public about the dangers associated with vaccination, which is one of the reasons for a decrease in intention to vaccinate. Conspiracy theories frequently claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips that track the location of patients, are generally harmful, and result in serious diseases, all of which is covered up by powerful and malevolent groups [
14]. Importantly, COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs, just as the majority of similar convictions [
15,
16], involve an intergroup dimension. They postulate that there is a nefarious outgroup (e.g., scientists and Big Pharma) that covertly influences the course of COVID-19 pandemic and thus constitutes a threat to the ingroup (e.g., one’s own nation).
This intergroup facet of conspiracy theories has inspired researchers to analyze conspiracy beliefs in relation to social and political identities. For example, many research projects [
17,
18,
19] emphasized the role of narcissistic group identity in seizing on conspiratorial explanations. This is not surprising, as collective narcissism (i.e., a belief in one’s group’s greatness that is contingent on external validation [
20]) increases sensitivity to intergroup threats [
16], making people distrustful and more prone to interpret even ambivalent intergroup situations as posing a real danger to their own group [
21]. This usually leads to an appraisal of the world as a dangerous and nefarious place, and a search for imaginary enemies (i.e., alleged conspirators) that could be blamed for the ingroup’s misfortunes [
19]. In line with this logic, Cislak and colleagues [
22] found that defensiveness about one’s nationality, operationalized as national narcissism, predicted vaccination conspiracy beliefs, which further led to lower support for a voluntary vaccination policy. In such a way, due to exaggerating feelings of intergroup threat coming from higher-status groups (e.g., scientists or pharmaceutical companies), national narcissists were found to perceive the world as a dangerous place, seize on conspiracy beliefs, and in turn score higher on vaccine hesitancy. Although inspiring, the Cislak et al. [
22] study did not assess the actual willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19, which is crucial in the situation when the world is facing the pandemic, a global crisis with millions of deaths.
We aimed to fill this gap and better understand the role of social identities (i.e., national narcissism, secure national identification, identification with all humanity) and COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs in predicting attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines. Specifically, we sought to examine which forms of social identity may be linked to COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and the unwillingness to vaccinate against COVID-19. We investigated whether those who score high (vs. low) on national narcissism would be more (vs. less) prone to endorse COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories and, in turn, express less (vs. more) willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19. We also controlled for a secure national identification (i.e., national identity free from national narcissism; Studies 1 and 2) and identification with all humanity (Study 2) to check whether the effects of national narcissism on vaccine hesitancy would be present after accounting for these variables previously found to predict health behaviors in the context of COVID-19 [
23,
24]. In such a way, we offer the first empirical insight into associations between different forms of social identities, COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs, and the (un)willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19.
1.2. Social Identities—Different Forms and Their Correlates
Addressing people’s beliefs about their ingroups is becoming increasingly important in the general quest for understanding what is going on in the world today [
25] and in the context of mass emergencies [
26], particularly including the COVID-19 the pandemic [
27]. For example, our previous research found that the way people perceive their nation can shape not only their political preferences (e.g., voting [
28]), but also existential choices (e.g., in which country they want to live [
29]). These dynamics depend, however, on whether individuals’ attachment to a nation is defensive (i.e., stems from frustrated individual or collective needs) or secure (i.e., is built on the foundations of individual or collective satisfaction). The present investigation focuses on three different types of identities: national narcissism (Studies 1 and 2), secure national identification (Studies 1 and 2), and identification with all humanity (Study 2). The national narcissism type of identity is defensive and can be related to maladaptive psychological outcomes at both the individual and group levels. Secure national identification and identification with all humanity are affirmative identities that can be linked to positive psychological outcomes [
30,
31].
National narcissism is characterized by a grandiose appraisal of one’s national group that is contingent on the external acknowledgement of its worth [
20,
32,
33]. This type of ingroup identity is compensatory and destructive from the perspective of both individual and group-level processes [
20,
30,
34,
35]. Collective narcissists search for a strong group that would help them manage some of their psychological shortcomings (group in the service of the self [
36]). For example, previous studies showed that narcissistic identification stems from a sense of low personal control [
37] and low self-esteem [
38]. Collective narcissism is associated with high defensive self-evaluation [
39] and high anxious attachment style [
36]. Although national narcissism results from the frustration of different needs, it does not necessarily reinforce feelings of personal control or boost self-esteem [
37]. In contrast, due to its defensive nature, it backfires, leading to maladaptive psychological outcomes. For example, it was found to predict negative view of human nature (i.e., social cynicism [
39]), conspiracy beliefs [
16], ingroup disloyalty [
29], intergroup hostility [
40,
41], and lower intergroup forgiveness [
34]. Bertin and colleagues [
17] reported that national narcissism was associated with the rejection of climate science, an effect that was mediated by climate change conspiracy beliefs. Thus, there are reasons to believe that the distrustful nature of collective narcissists would make them more prone to endorse COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and subsequently lead to lower readiness to vaccinate against COVID-19.
We would expect very different dynamics among secure identifiers whose national commitment stems from satisfied psychological needs (e.g., higher feelings of personal control [
29,
37] and positive emotionality [
38]). Unlike collective narcissists, these individuals are less interested in joining a strong group in order to help them cope with potential psychological shortcomings [
30]. Instead, persons who score high on secure national identification search for an opportunity to constructively develop or strengthen the image of their national ingroup by working on behalf of it (self in the service of the group [
36]). Consequently, they are not hostile against out-group members, do not endorse conspiratorial explanations [
16], and have positive attitudes towards both ingroup and out-group members [
16,
29,
30]. Recent research also found that those securely identified with their nation are more trusting, open-minded, and ready to respect the views and opinions of others, even if they disagree with them [
39]. All these findings suggest that secure identifiers should behave differently than collective narcissists do. They should be less likely to believe in conspiracy theories and consequently less likely to refuse COVID-19 vaccination.
Likewise, we would expect similar dynamics among those individuals who are not only positively attached to their nation, but also feel a connection with people far beyond their current geographical location, labeled as an identification with all humanity (IWAH [
31,
42]). Referring to all “humanity” as an ingroup equals moving beyond parochial interests towards solidarity with and care for all humans [
31]. This type of identity is present among psychologically mature individuals who have developed “deep feelings of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general” [
43] (p. 138), and is linked to engaging in activities that express positive attitudes towards all humankind [
31,
44]. IWAH going hand in hand with psychological security was documented in studies on attachment styles. High scores on the IWAH scale were positively correlated with a secure attachment style, and negatively with fearful attachment style [
34]. Furthermore, IWAH was negatively related to the need for approval [
31], self-centeredness [
45], and “dark triad” personality traits [
31,
46]. When it comes to relationships between IWAH and group-related outcomes, McFarland [
47] and Hamer with colleagues [
48] presented evidence for its negative relation with ethnocentrism. Likewise, IWAH was found to negatively predict prejudice and intergroup hostility [
49], but it was positively related to forgiveness of former national enemies [
34,
50], and intergroup empathy and helping [
51].